Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Muslim Students and the Jihad Against the NYPD

Muslim Students and the Jihad Against the NYPD

By Daniel Greenfield

Last year several Hellfire missiles finally put an end to Anwar Al-Awlaki, a leading Al-Qaeda figure who had been involved in several terrorist attacks carried out against the United States, including the Times Square Bomber and the Underwear Bomber. It has even been alleged that Al-Awlaki may have had pre-existing knowledge of the attacks of September 11.

Before all that though, Anwar Al-Awlaki had been the president of the Muslim Students Association at Colorado State University, home of the Rams and the future leader of external operations for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Al-Awlaki’s path from MSA president to terrorist kingpin was a traditional one for MSA presidents.

While some campus groups are known for having members that go on to excel in business or science, Muslim Students Association members become leaders in a very particular and bloody field. The record shows that the terrorist leaders of tomorrow are the MSA members of today. And if you were going to recruit future leaders of Al-Qaeda, a good place to start would be at your local MSA chapter.

Wael Hamza Jalaidan, a co-founder of Al-Qaeda, had been the president of the MSA at the University of Arizona. The former MSA president at Columbia College went on to serve as Al-Qaeda’s procurement agent in the United States. The MSA president at the University of South Alabama became the spokesman for the Al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia.

This is only a sliver of the complete record of the MSA’s terrorist involvement, some of which can be found in the recent Freedom Center pamphlet, “Muslim Hate Groups on Campus.” A recent Freedom Center ad listing some of the MSA’s terrorist kingpins elicited outrage from the MSA, but not a single fact based rebuttal. How could it when some of the most high profile terrorist raids and prosecutions involved MSA presidents and even MSA co-founders?

All that makes the current media furor over NYPD monitoring of MSA students so much more dishonest. A white supremacist or radical environmentalist organization with a similar track record would be routinely monitored in the same way and any complaints would be shelved. But the media insists on treating the MSA as if it were somehow special. As if it were above the law.The Associated Press’ run of hostile stories on NYPD surveillance is in sharp contrast to its post-September 11 coverage. Ten years ago the AP was singing a different tune in a story reporting on FBI monitoring of the MSA and its involvement in fundraising for terrorist front group charities, including Benevolence International, an Al-Qaeda front. This time around there is no mention of Benevolence International or terrorist involvements and readers are left to assume that the NYPD is irrationally profiling Muslims.

George Vinson, an FBI veteran who served as California’s Homeland Security Advisor under two governors, said at the time, “Shame on law enforcement if we didn’t do this.” Now law enforcement is being shamed for doing it.

The NYPD, which is on the front line of the war on terror, stands watch over a city that has been hammered by Muslim terrorism like no other place in America, is being victimized in a smear campaign by Muslim groups, the media and politicians pandering to the jihad vote. It is being assailed by politicians from New Jersey to Chicago who have one hand out at mosque fundraisers while the other points a stern finger at the NYPD for doing its job.

To understand why the NYPD does what it does, we have to look at the results achieved. Last year the NYPD arrested an Al-Qaeda sympathizer who was planning to murder members of the armed forces returning from abroad, and it took down Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh, who wanted to blow up an entire synagogue and kill as many Jews as possible. It did this before they struck, not afterwards, thanks to its undercover operatives.

NYPD undercover operatives infiltrate Muslim watering holes, listening to the chatter and monitoring anyone who seems eager to spill some infidel blood. And then they get their man.The NYPD has 1200 men and an annual budget of 330 million dollars focused on defeating terrorists. While the Obama era FBI has put a greater focus on “corporate fraud,” “financial institution fraud” and “health care fraud,” infiltrating “online pharmacies“ and “nursing homes,” the NYPD is still vigilant because it’s their city.

Nor can the NYPD confine itself to the five boroughs. The September 11 hijackers were outside NYPD jurisdiction until they entered New York airspace. The World Trade Center bombers came out of Jersey City. Local is good enough for small scale terrorist attacks, but the first sign of a large scale terrorist attack orchestrated out of Boston or across the river in New Jersey may be the rising flames and smoke over a New York landmark.

In Trenton, New Jersey’s Attorney General met with Muslim leaders demanding action, including the local chair of CAIR, an organization that remains an unindicted terrorist conspirator. In Chicago, Newark’s former police director, met with Muslims and promised that there would be no blanket surveillance. Back home in New York City, radical leftist mayoral candidate John Liu, whose campaign treasurer was recently charged with fraud and who appears to have been the beneficiary of a lot of donations that have come out of thin air, condemned the surveillance. He was one of the few to do so.

In New York City support for the surveillance is apolitical to a surprising extent. Mayor Bloomberg, usually a vocal advocate of Muslim causes, has been equally vocal in defending the NYPD. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, so far to the left that he all but promised Al Sharpton an office in Albany, has declined to investigate the NYPD. The likely Democratic successors to Bloomberg remained equally mum. Even in a liberal town, no one besides the Associated Press, which makes its headquarters on the West Side, places political correctness over another September 11.

Richard Levin, the president of Yale University, issued a statement saying that, “that police surveillance based on religion, nationality, or peacefully expressed political opinions is antithetical to the values of Yale.”

A good distance away from Yale and its values, across the state border, two airplanes took off from Logan International Airport and were used as instruments of mass murder by a group of men who were not profiled by religion, nationality or their political opinions.

At last year’s commemoration of September 11, Levin claimed that the “fundamentalism” of September 11 had its precursor in the Salem witch trials and celebrated that Muslim and Jewish students had come together to read “each other’s sacred texts”. He concluded by snidely dismissing those who confront terrorism “with force”, and boasted that at Yale, “We confront fundamentalism and terrorism by other means. We challenge established beliefs.”

But while the Levins go about their merry way, challenging terrorism by challenging “established beliefs”, there are men and women who go about challenging it the old fashioned way. Some wear blue uniforms, others blue suits and still others wear turbans. They can blend in anywhere, including in the Muslim Students Association. When they monitor a mosque in Paterson NJ or a Muslim Students Association website in Ohio, which in the past featured an entire site dedicated to Bin Laden, they are doing their job by protecting the Levins of this world… and by protecting us.We saw the values of the NYPD on September 11. We have also seen the values of the MSA in the terrorists who have sprung from its ranks. Finally we have seen the impotent and frivolous values of the Levins. It is up to all of us to make our choice.